Heartland Family Productions
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The Power of the Cross - Part Two
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As we continue in this passage, I’d like us to honor the Word of God by just standing as I read these verses. Romans 11:33-36. Would you stand with me?
"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?' 'Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid?' For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever."
And all God’s people said, “Amen.”
I believe this passage provides a framework—a context—for our lives as women. It gives us a fixed reference point for our hearts. It tethers our hearts to God’s ultimate eternal purposes. It gives us a perspective and a grid for responding to God’s sovereign choices in our lives and for responding to circumstances that we cannot understand or explain.
It all starts by saying, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.” Oh, the depth. Interestingly there, the Greek word that is translated “depth,” sounds a lot like our English word “bath.”
It’s like you’re going down into this, to be bathed in it. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.” They are immeasurable. They’re so deep that you can’t get to the bottom of it all.
On January 23rd of 1960, a U.S. Navy lieutenant and a Swiss scientist got into a submersible vessel that’s known as a bath escape. It goes down into the depths.
They went down to the bottom of the Marina’s Trench that is located in the Pacific Ocean near Guam. This is the deepest spot on Earth. It’s 35,800 feet deep. That’s about seven miles—down, down, down to the deepest spot of the oceans in the world.
Interestingly, no man has ever been back to that place since, and I read one study that said it would probably take one hundred million dollars to do that again. Nobody’s even tried. It’s so deep. Going seven miles to the bottom of the ocean is a massive human feat, but I have to tell you, it is nothing compared to the depths found in God.
You can never, ever plumb the depths of His riches, His wisdom, His knowledge. You can’t get your mind around it. Words fail. His wisdom and knowledge and riches are inexhaustible; they’re limitless; they’re immeasurable.
Oh the depth. It’s immeasurable. Not only is the depth immeasurable, but the riches, the wisdom, and knowledge of God are foundational. I think that’s part of what it meant when Paul says, “Oh the depth of these things.” They’re foundational.
When you get to the bottom of everything in your life, you find the bedrock. Dr. Piper called it granite—the bedrock of our lives and our faith are the riches, the wisdom, and the knowledge of God. That’s what’s underneath it all and holding it all together.
In 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her family were arrested by the Nazi’s for harboring Jews in the their home. They were sent to the Ravensbrook concentration camp in Germany where Betsy ultimately died.
Corrie’s sister, Betsy, before she died, said to Corrie, and you’ve probably heard this sentence before. She said, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”
Betsy died in that concentration camp, but Corrie was released, and as many of you know her story, she lived into her 90’s. For decades she traveled all around the world.
For the rest of her life, that was the heart of her message—the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge and love of God. Her point was, however deep your problems, however deep your challenges, however deep your issues, there is something, should we say Someone, that is deeper. Under the everlasting arms, oh the depth—immeasurable, foundational for our lives. Now, what is it that’s so deep? Well, Paul tells us, “Oh the depth of the riches of God.”
I understand that there are vast riches to be found in the depths of the earth. It’s estimated, at least in one source that I read, that there are at least six billion dollars in sunken treasure that lie on the bottom of the earth’s ocean floors waiting to be discovered.
There’s lots of treasure down there. Then I read about the world’s deepest gold mine, which is found in South Africa, about 60 miles outside of Johannesburg. This gold mine goes more than two miles down into the earth.
It’s been described as the eighth wonder of the world. It’s the richest gold mine in the world. It’s produced more than a hundred million ounces of gold—that’s three thousand tons of gold—since it began operating in the early 1950’s.
This gold mine—one gold mine alone—employs almost 17,000 people working all the time to mine the gold out of the earth. And it’s not done. There’s still more gold in them hills! This one gold mine is expected to produce at least a million ounces of gold every year for the next twenty years.
But I’ve got to tell you, within the depths of God are found riches that infinitely surpass earth’s greatest riches. Earlier in the book of Romans, Paul talks about the riches of God’s kindness, His forbearance, His patience.
He talks in chapter 9 about the riches of God’s glory. In the book of Ephesians, he talks about the riches of God’s grace, and it says, “He is rich in mercy.” Unlike the riches in the ocean floors or beneath the surface of the earth, God’s riches are limitless. You see, the gold in that mine will run out some day. But the gold in God’s mine will never, ever, ever, ever run out.
Next Time: According to His Riches and Glory